Should a membership fee be implemented?

side note: over the years i have moderated a board with over 80,000 members and currently one with 125,000 members and administer fully one of about 8,000 members. i am aware of the maintenance and costs for these to run. i know how hosting gets out of control with disk space (so many pictures these days!) and bandwidth. this is why i brought hosting in-house. www.thetemplehost.com . unlimited bandwidth and disk space is dictated by the server.

that being said, paid sites die. if you make it a requirement to post or continue with donation only, the board will wane to the just those that do, which will be a much smaller number than you think, always is, and then it will just be a tiny community of the same old folks talking about the same ol things, instead of a constantly expanding center for help and everything else, for everyone.

i hate ads. everyone does. also why i brought hosting in house, so it's not necessary. but if it is, throw some discrete google ads somewhere, or get sponsors to have banner ads at a monthly cost to them. but then it probably still won't be enough, after all, that's more bandwidth per page, and you're getting charged by the hosting company.

only real solution, bring it in house, host it yourself. or i'd be happy to, caus this place is great and i don't want to see it go the way of the dinosaur with paid subscriptions or tons of ads

 

Yes.. Push the donate button now......

 

I'm sorry but I think a fee is a bad idea. Why did I come to this board? because its free and it has a lot of great info and sources here.

I think it would prevent future members with good info and sources for parts etc. from coming here if they had to pay. The internet is so big and there are a lot of great free info out there. I think it would just push traffic to other boards that are free.

Board sponser's are where you should get paid. They get our money anyway right?

 

Fees to make transactions in the Classified section is a nice idea but some members here (Jay) have also had good ideas such as asking a donation to the site be made in the pay it forward section as free parts change hands. That way free parts are still passed on much below their retail value and the site benifits as well. I would say any donation over $5 is acceptable as some money is better than no money.

 

If everybody who looked at this thread as of today had donated $1.00 to the board,I believe that we would be ok for almost 3yrs at today costs.JW has stated on here his intentions and a fee is not one of them,I wonder why still beating on the same old horse?:beer

 

Find a vendor who can create some v8 Buick shirts with various Buick vehicles this site addresses. I'm sure if purchased a the right price with a nominal profit margin people would buy. Nowadays everybody wants something for their $. This way everyone gets something!!

 

Tough question, but I think it should remain free and more people should donate. I don't want to get into a "tax the rich" idea.. but this forum has some big differences in demographics.

Some people have 32 show-cars and others on here have a junker they're just trying to get to start after buying it for $300.

Side note: all other car forums I've been on have been free, from Nissan Z31's to Ford P71's, to hotrodders.com, etc.

The other problem with a paid site is, there's some old-fashioned folks on here whom I'm sure still deal only in cash with everything. Getting some of our members who are not computer savvy to pay via paypal or something similar to that would be a challenge.

 

I agree with comments from Boston except that I cannot offer hosting. As mentioned paid sites are different in personality and often die.

Speaking just for me: I enjoy stopping by once in a while but I no longer own a Buick or live in the US so if required to pay I'm much less likely to visit. I also like to look in classifieds and dream. Not sure how many others fit that description

 

Currently there are 186 members and 446 guests viewing. That's a skewed number because some are members that are not logged on..

 

It's really a non-discussion..

 

At least there are no NEW threads. Also others that have or want to have a forum can learn (maybe).

I any case thats how conversations are in real life too... same old war stories told over and over.

 

A yearly membership fee would be ok with me. You would pay a membership fee in a club, this site is way better than any club!
Hell, $20 bucks a year would be a great deal considering all the info that's available.

I'm for it :TU:

 

I assume you donated already??

http://www.v8buick.com/billspaypal.php?

 

I would gladly pay a membership fee but I don't think it's a good idea.

What if we had raffles for fund raising. Offer some aluminum valve covers from TA for your choice engine. Sell tickets for a designated period of time and charge $1.00 per ticket. Any registered member can buy all the tickets they want. A board administrator can accept payment through Paypal then log the ticket numbers for that member.
We could hold a poll to see what you would buy raffle tickets for, to see what people need or want. The most popular items would be offerd for raffle.
I was in a 4x4 club in CA years ago and even with membership fees we ran short sometimes. The raffels always brought up our resources, and it was fun.

 

I would be in favor of a small fee such as $5 a year so that still most folks can use our site. Hey, lets face it times are tough. I could also see a small non membership fee to advertise here. I can see some down sides, but I would be glad to pay $5 a year for access to this wealth of information.
Thanks
Wil

 

At the top of the page right under the V8 is a button that says DONATE. There are other ways to donate as well..

 

Over the last 12 years I've ran a few websites myself. There are alot of expenses such as web hosting, programming and what not. On top of that, it requires daily (24/7) attention! and people dont come cheap!

I found this site 2 weeks ago (only bought my first Buick 3 weeks ago), and the knowledge I've gotten from here is incredible (amazing how different a Buick is to a Chevy!) Anyway I'll be sending a few $ their way to help support the site.

-Rob

 

There is great info here on the site, I have no prob paying $5.00 to keep it going. Ads suck, we don't want them on every page. I'm going to PP $ right now!

 

A few of the Forum's I'm on have a "member's only section".

The rest of the forum is free, if you want to get into the members area you have to be a paying member.

I'm doing something right now on NES: http://www.northeastshooters.com/vbulletin/forum.php

It's a tour of the Smith & Wesson Plant and then we go over to the Shooting Center. We also do shoot's and other things that are only open to the members. If I remember right it's $21 a year to be green.


One of the 4 Wheeling Club's that I was in is the same way, if you are not a member of the club you can not view the members area (you can view everything else), if you are a member you can view the members area.

That's just a thought. If we didn't want to do a members only area and leave everything open I would still send $ 5 or $10 into a site I visited alot to help pay for the overhead.

Just my thoughts, hope it helped.

David